Always Moving Sideways
by Nitlon
Summary: All I wanted was an adventure. Is that so much to ask? AU Axel/Roxas friendship fic. Indefinite hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

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A/N: This story will alternate POV between Axel and Roxas (i.e., next chapter will be Roxas).

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_We find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve._**  
- Maxwell Maltz****

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It was probably weird, walking around in the rain when you didn't even like it. But Axel really hated the smell of shampoo, especially guy shampoo since it smelled like tiger musk (which he knew for a confirmed fucking fact, once he'd worked up the nerve to go up to the cage in a zoo in Scotland). And rain got rid of shampoo-smell.

It wasn't that bad, the rain. He just didn't…like it.

Apparently it rained in London a fucking lot, because the circus had only been there for fifteen days and it'd basically been alternating between drizzling and pouring for ten of them.

He was walking around some urban district, he didn't bother remembering which, with his big spiky hair tied back in a loose ponytail and his very thin glasses on. People always seemed so surprised when they found out he had slightly faulty vision. He didn't usually wear glasses. He didn't even usually wear contacts; all it meant was he couldn't read letters that were really far away. And when you were on a trapeze you didn't really need to read letters really far away.

But Axel was a tall guy, and had flaming red hair, and when he was walking around in shady urban districts alone wearing a black coat people tended to assume that he was a criminal. He found that a ponytail and his glasses just made him look fucking artsy, instead, and he got a kick out of how different everyone acted around an artsy guy.

Besides, walking helped him think. He stuck his hands in his pockets, felt the smooth shape of an iPod in one and his cell phone in the other.

London was fucking depressing. Streets were cobblestone, and rain ran through the grooves in the rock and pooled in the middle of the road. He could see his own breath in front of him, fogging up his glasses.

A car passed by, rumble-rumble-rumble down the cobblestone lane, right through a puddle that narrowly avoided splashing Axel. It was raining harder; his hair was soaked, just like his pants, and water drops were running down his nose to hang off the pointed tip. Each droplet dangled for a few hopeless seconds before dropping or collecting in the curve of his upper lip, where he absently licked it off. He didn't see anybody else on the road and was glad for it.

He noticed, watching his feet on the sidewalk, clunk-clunk-clunk, lots of worms pointing their little pink ends all over the place. Why was it worms came

up when it rained? They didn't want to drown, or something? It was something stupid like that.

If that was why they came up, then he'd found an exceptionally dumb worm, because it was flailing around in one of the pools that collected in a dip in the sidewalk.

Axel took some amount of pity on it, bending down to pluck it out of the water and dumping it unceremoniously down on the flatter, if just as wet, part of the sidewalk. It probably didn't matter, anyways. It was going to get stepped on by somebody. He shrugged, standing up again. Didn't really matter. Plenty of other worms.

He wiped his hand on the side of his coat (which just made it wet instead of slimy) and leaned against the wet brick wall behind him.

London was fucking depressing, and now his hand was all wet. He fucking hated water.

His phone rang suddenly, buzz-buzz-buzzing against his thigh like a bug. "Crap!"

He grunted and felt around with his wet hand in his pocket for the stupid thing. Of course, as soon as he flipped it open raindrops started to fall on the screen, magnifying colors like big PCP rainbows.

Phone call from: Demyx_ (0–208–123–5877)_

"…the fuck does he want?" Axel muttered to himself, trying to wipe off the screen with his wet thumb and failing miserably, streaking it with rainbow smudges. "Hello?" he grumbled.

"Hey-ho, dairy-o!"

"Dem, what the Hell."

There was the static crackle of laughter and the clang of a pot somewhere on the other end. _"Um, where are you right now?"_

"Dunno. Downtown London near Crystal Palace, I guess."

_"That's specific."_

"I got what I got, angel."

A couple of kids on the other side of the street ran by, hoods over their heads and jeans dragging in the puddles. Behind them was a young guy with a dyed-orange Mohawk, walking real calm and real slow.

Axel chuckled. Fake red heads were kind of flattering and kind of sad.

"Psh. Whatever. Saïx just dropped by and he says we're leaving in half an hour, which I assumes means with or without you – "

Axel rolled his eyes. A sad little spike of red hair drooped down in front of his face like a wet puppy.

"Yeah," he groused. "I get it. I'll be there in – what time is it now?" It was too dark outside to check his watch, even though technically the sun was only just setting. Rain kind of ate light. He wiped a drop of water off his chin.

_"Uh, just around six-thirty, I guess."_

"'Kay, I'll be there in twenty minutes, fairy-face."

_"Wh- screw you! Owning one pink shirt does not make me g– "_

Axel hung up and started running in the direction he'd just come from. His heart pounded faster as he picked up speed, hearing his heavy breathing in his ears and relishing the cold shower of running against the rain. Somewhere behind him, he heard shouting; he didn't care. He could run damn fast, even if his body was beginning to sweat underneath his coat, and even if his shirt was sticking to his back and his hair was dripping water and his glasses were bouncing up and down. All he could see were little rain droplets on glass and London fog. And, if he looked down, dead worms.

XXX

Even though the rain was sort of letting up, the wet wasn't. As Axel slowed to a jog in the field his big-ass boots went _squelch, squelch, squelch_ in the mud.

He didn't know why the circus always had to be set up in fucking _fields_, anyways. What was the harm in the occasional stadium? Football field during the off-season? Come on. Something they didn't have to put up and take down.

The big red-and-yellow striped tent had already been packed up that morning. Any goers-by right now would just think that it was a well-decorated trailer park.

Xemnas insisted that even the residential trailers be red-and-gold themed, at least. He had old-fashioned circus advertisements painted on each like big, muscular men with handlebar mustaches and leopard-print tunics whipping lions.

They didn't _have_ lions.

The closest they had was William, the performing dog. And he rolled over for anybody.

But, Xemnas insisted. He said it was in keeping with the grand tradition of the performing arts, and that when people went to see a circus, they expected a show anywhere they went – even if it was the trailers parked to the side.

So they were painted red and gold with weird drawings.

Axel headed instinctively for the front of the line of trailers, where they kept the real talent. The original shit. None of these dancers who could stand on their heads or people who sold tickets or clowns.

Axel and Demyx's trailer had a man with red and gold stripes all down his body, even his face and hair, and he was holding onto one end of a rope. The other end of the rope was holding onto a tired-looking lion. Surprisingly, Axel really liked it. He thought it was the only good one, anyways.

A contortionist went by, wearing only striped tights and a bright red leotard, walking on her hands. Show-off.

Axel rolled his eyes and sighed; that was the circus for you. Everyone was a competitive jerk. Everyone wanted to have the best act. That was why he was glad he shared a trailer with one of the musicians. There were four musicians, and they were all so fucking mellow it was like being friends with weed without the brain damage. Demyx was pretty tidy, too, for a dude.

He stepped onto the outside step of the trailer and knocked loudly on the window. Things were beginning to be moved, and he wanted to be inside when they started to get pulled. He could see, somewhere ahead, one of the acrobats coming along and hooking all the trailers and cars and stuff to each other.

"Dem!" he shouted.

"Coming, coming!" came the muffled voice from inside, just before the man swung the door open. His eyebrows were furrowed, his hands on his hips, a frown on his lips.

"What?" Axel asked, shoving his way inside.

"Six fifty-seven," Demyx said, pointing to the clock on the microwave oven. "Cutting it kind of close there, aren't ya?"

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, hanging his jacket – heavy with water – on one of the pegs by the door. His shirt, unfortunately, also seemed soaked through and through. He sighed, sitting in one of the two chipped wooden kitchen chairs and kicking his feet up on the table. He leaned his head back so that his hair dripped onto the floor.

Demyx rolled his eyes. "Shoes off," he commanded, kicking Axel in the knee. "And for God's sake take off that shirt before you get like, pneumonia or something," he added, heading for the end of the trailer with a tiny little half-a-stovetop.

It was a very small trailer, as far as trailers went. The door was at one end with the kitchen table, and then there was a counter that stretched along one side underneath a big window with tacky curtains. Cabinets theoretically hung above the counter, but there wasn't anything in them since the doors didn't even stay closed. It was a problem in a moving vehicle.

They used one of the cabinets for a very small number of books. They kept the door closed at any given time with a length of silver duct tape, which they had to replace every time they wanted to get a book out.

There was a sort of doorless doorway that led to a fold-out bed which Axel and Demyx had to share. But they were usually so tired at the end of the day they didn't have much trouble with that arrangement.

And everything was this sort of pea-colored-puke green color with very tired wood floors and furniture. There was barely room for a tiny antenna TV and their two laptops.

But hey, it was home.

Axel laughed and pulled his shirt off without even standing up, dropping it on the floor next to him.

"Ax-_el_!" Demyx complained, stooping down to scoop up the wet puddle of shirt. "Man, Mansex would _kill_ you if he knew you did this," he said, dropping it in the sink.

"Yeah," Axel grinned, lacing his hands behind his head, "I _lo-ove_ you, Dem-dem," he cooed.

"One of these days, I'm gonna snap and either kill you or just rape you," Demyx said darkly from the other end of the trailer.

"What?"

"Nothing." He looked up and smiled brightly at his redheaded roommate.

"Che," Axel snorted, resting his chin on his chest and looking down at his chest. He was very pale and very skinny. He knew for a fact that hips didn't normally jut out that far (on _guys_), and that he was way underweight for his height, but it was the physique that came with being a trapeze artist. He wasn't allowed to be fire-swallower. Xemnas said he couldn't be _trusted_.

Asswipe.

But as he watched his skinny, pale and damp chest rise and fall with breaths and felt oddly disconnected from it, he mused that while he generally didn't have a problem with having girl hips and a girl waist, he didn't really have as much hair as he'd hoped for. It stood to reason that he would be a very hairy person there since he certainly was at the top of his head, but apparently his body spent all its hair-making energy up there instead.

Wasn't coffee supposed to put hair on your chest, or something?

"Hey Demyx," he said offhandedly. "Do we have instant coffee or anything?"

Demyx ran a hand through his faux-hawk and looked in the small box of junk food they kept in case of emergency (which transferred to all the time). It was mostly just chips and Cup Noodles and a few candy bars from Saynesbury's.

"Uh," he said, "We have herbal tea." He lifted up a very lonely-looking box with a drawing of lemons on the front. "I don't think it has an expiration date, so…want some?"

Axel sighed and stared up at the ceiling, leaning his neck against the back of the chair. "Yeah, okay," he said.

It was one of those shit days where everything hurt. Even breathing. Like air hurt his sore lungs. Two shows in one day took something out of you. He closed one eye, then opened it and closed the other. He kept himself amused noticing how his perspective just barely changed when he did this.

"Ax, your hair's dripping all over the floor. Can't you like, get a towel or something to put under it?" Demyx asked, exasperated, setting a tea pot on the stove.

"Mmf," Axel grunted. "I will once we start moving."

Demyx tutted. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic. "Yeah, okay," he said.

"Where're we going now, anyways?"

"Liverpool for about a month, I think." Demyx shrugged and got out a couple of paper cups, humming some incessant tune.

"'Zat far from here?"

"It's like a four-hour drive, so it's probably at least double that for us–" the trailer shook. _Shikka-shikka-shikka, _said the door. Trees began to scroll by outside, very slowly, and their house began to rattle cabinet doors and any loose objects lying around. It became a soothing sound after a while. Axel liked to be moving.

"Hey Axel," Demyx said, poking him in the cheek, "Guess what."

"Uh-huh," said Axel, closing both of his eyes. He didn't feel like moving.

"Doofus!" his friend accused, tugging on a spike of Axel-hair. "At least take your glasses off; you look weird."

Axel pulled the glasses of his nose, trying to wipe off the water with his thumbs and putting them on the table next to his bare feet.

He laced his fingers over his chest and sighed. A loose pen or something was making this incessant _tick-tick_ sound, like an out-of-time clock as it rolled against a wall or a box or a piece of furniture.

He rubbed one hand over his eye and yawned; Demyx was staring. He had his elbows resting on the table, his head perched between both of his palms and a cherubic smile in between them. His eyes twinkled.

"Demyx, please stop smiling at me like that," he grumbled.

"What?" Demyx sat up, frowning. "What's wrong with how I smile?"

"'M tired, Dem, go read a book or something," he said, pinching the brow of his nose. You know what he missed, he missed videogames. He hadn't played a videogame since he was nineteen.

"I don't wanna," Demyx said. "I don't feel like being alone."

Axel blinked; his eyes stung and his mouth tasted like fuzz. He blinked sad. His face felt…funny and his eyes felt…funny and his head was tingling all wrong. He'd had two shows today and each of them required spinning around in midair for a good fifteen minutes watched by hundreds of people and catching other people who were spinning around in midair. And he had to be artsy while he was doing it. And then he had to help other people out and he was _so_ tiredsad.

"Go play with your guitar or your trumpet or something," he replied. "Do that…that song that starts with L, the one with the coronet or whatever."

"'Leaving the City?'"

"Sure. Whatever." Demyx shrugged at him. The teapot started to whistle high-high-high like a scream. Demyx got up to go get it and Axel tilted his head to the side, just barely able to see out the window from the angle he was at. Dark things were going by very quickly, trees and sometimes cars, and the moon was only sort-of out. It was a dull spot of shiny white fuzz in the clouds.

"Here," Demyx said cheerfully, handing Axel a paper cup with a teabag floating in the hot water. Little curls of red floated in the water column like drops of food coloring. Axel swirled the cup with one hand to try and mix it around. He sniffed it.

"Thanks," he said, already feeling cold in every part of his body except the hand holding the cup. "Do we have sugar or anything for it?"

"We have…cocoa powder."

"I'll pass," Axel said sarcastically, grabbing the tag of the teabag and plopping it up and down. "What kind of tea did you say this was?" Everything seemed very quiet in the moving home. Subdued, and colored with a grayish-brown tint like even the air was sort of sick of it. Things kept rattling, _rattle-rattle-rattle_, and the trees sighed like _krssh._

Demyx looked at the box on the kitchen counter. "'_Boosey and Hawkes Tea Corporation Lemon'_…_'Zinger,'_" he said, sounding somewhat concerned.

"Lemon Zinger?"

"That's what the box says."

"'Boosey and Hawkes' is a fucking retarded name for a tea company. They should be doing beer or…falconry."

Demyx snorted and started to make faces at his reflection in the toaster-that-didn't-work.

Axel just kept swirling the cup around with his hand and watching the little red curls dissipate into the water, almost like blood but less…morbid. It smelled nice, but he really just didn't want anything going in his mouth at the moment.

"You know," he said, "I'll pass, actually. You can have it." He put the cup on the table, pushing it towards Demyx (who looked highly offended) and headed for the tiny almost-a-bathroom with a sort-of-sink. "I'm going to bed."

He brushed his teeth until his gums started bleeding and fell asleep sprawled out across the entire top half of the bed.

XXX

Axel Turner hated the snake dream because he always woke up feeling fucking bipolar and with bad grammar.

It always broke his stupid heart, the snake dream, and he kept having it.

It was a forest, surrounded by but not _made up of_ evergreens, which was a distinction his brain always made without his mind actually knowing why. It was always daytime, but it was the dark sort of daytime with sunlight the color of melted butter; dark and thick and coming down like raindrops of light through branches.

He walked through it step-by-step, with very slow crunches. It was funny; he never saw any branches on the trees, but there were shadows on the ground. Like he was surrounded by poles.

**_Hsssss_**_!_

"Shit!" Axel jumped backwards without moving at all. There was an anaconda on the ground, very sly-like with its head just by Axel's feet.

A bright red cat came up behind it, sitting on the meatier part of the snake's body and twitching its tail back and forth. That hadn't been there before.

(This dream used to be strange, used to have the dream-quality of dreams where things that shouldn't make sense made sense and he was overwhelmed by funniness. But now he noticed everything.)

The snake raised its head all of a sudden, staring at Axel with sheep-eyes. Its pupils were horizontal slits, which wasn't right, because snakes didn't have sheep eyes. They had snake eyes. Snakes couldn't look sad.

There was a spike driven through its body, straight down to the ground with torn pinky-grey snake flesh around it and black blood pooling on the ground.

"Are you in pain?" asked the snake quietly. It looked back to the stake. "I am," it said sad.

Axel was sitting down on a log in front of it.

"A man came," the snake said sad, "And he kicked me _three whole times_ in my belly."

"Oh," said Axel, nodding understandingly.

"And he put this stick in me," said the snake, letting its head fall back to the ground.

The snake pushed its head underneath some of the leaves and shook it back and forth, squeezing its eyes shut.

"He came and he kicked me and he put a stick in my belly, and now I'm lost and I don't know where any of my friends are."

XXX

Axel opened his eyes.

They'd stopped moving, mostly, and he could hear the sounds of slamming trailer doors and big swathes of cloth being shaken out, of contortionists contorting in the most inconvenient places they could find and of clowns making whistling noises and doing funny things with their hands. Some of the other musicians were making noises, too, things with accordions and a clarinet. Something about the circus always sounded brassy and old. It was depressing, but it wasn't as depressing as a year of college twenty kilometers from the house where you grew up, so Axel stayed.

Demyx was asleep on the other half of the bed, curled up halfway underneath the covers wearing only his boxer shorts.

"Hey," Axel said, toeing him in the back. "Wake up."

"Huh? I'm, I'm up, I'm already up," Demyx said. "I was trying to sleep but you kept kicking me in the leg."

Axel yawned and sat up, peeling away the curtains from the window. It was still a few hours before the sun would be fully out.

He turned back to Demyx, "Would you put some clothes on? I don't know why you always sleep shirtless."

Demyx rolled his eyes. "Pot calling the…jeez."

"Huh?" Axel looked down and promptly realized that he was, in fact, also not wearing a shirt. "Oh, this is so fucking gay!"

Demyx rolled his eyes and got out of the bed, going over to the pile of clothing they kept in one corner. "I don't know why you talk like that," he muttered. "You're a perfectly nice guy."

"Sure," Axel said scathingly, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "I'm a freaking saint compared to _Hitler_. Hey, can you toss me a shirt from the clean-clothes pile?"

"Yup," Demyx threw something black and made of cloth at Axel that wasn't pants.

"Thanks," Axel said, pulling it over his head and tugging it down over his hips. "D'you know if Mansex already checked in?"

"Duh, no." Xemnas always came around to all the trailers as soon as they'd stopped somewhere new, making people help to set up. If you were asleep, though, – and not faking, because that freaky bastard could _tell_ – then he'd let you sleep, because he was careful not to overwork people. Overworked people led to stressed people, which led to quitting, which led to a big hassle for him.

"No you don't know or no he hasn't?"

"I don't know, I fell asleep while we were on a motorway. Just woke up."

Axel sighed and leaned up against the trailer door. "Shi-it," he groaned, "We have to go help now, don't we?"

And Dem sighed and nodded at him, grabbing a candy bar and heading outside.

XXX

Xemnas wouldn't let them leave until everything had been set up, even the things they weren't doing, like a teacher refusing to let his students out until every single one had pushed his or her chair in. So Demyx and Axel were lounging on the set-up half of the bleachers along with a few other people.

Axel counted: Luxord, Marluxia, Vexen, Xigbar, Saïx, Xaldin, Larxene, Lex, Zexion. Eleven people, lounging around lazily, watching the grunt workers grunt.

"Hey Zex," Demyx said, leaning back and tilting his head up so he could just see Zexion, sitting a row above him, "What's up?"

Zexion was fiddling with one of his retractable wands. He was the magician.

"From where I'm sitting, not much," he said, glancing at the red-and-yellow cloth ceiling.

"Gee, original," Demyx said, snorting and smiling.

"A cliché, no matter how contrived, is usually based on something universally true."

Demyx sighed and looked at Axel. "Intellectuals," he said. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without em."

Zexion laughed (but it was a very quiet, Zexion sort of laugh) and shook his head.

Axel sometimes suspected Zexion and Demyx of being secret best friends.

He envied them for it.

But instead of saying anything he sighed, and leaned back on the bleachers and watched someone drag in part of the ring. It was a big hunking piece of metal, slightly curved, and each section (there were eight of them) took two men to carry it. Right behind one of the burly guys came a very much house-sized cat, orange in color and just a little wide-faced, angry like a pug. Its ears were flattened against the side of its head and Axel watched as it hissed at somebody lugging a landing mat in from the other side of the tent. It headed for them.

"Peanut Butter!" Axel said happily when it bounded up the bleachers for the whole group. The weird-names. The eleven of them (and Xemnas) all had stage names with Xs. Just an anagram of your real name, with an X. Most of them liked it because they had pretty lame normal names. Demyx, for example, was actually _Myde Lipson_. That was a pretty fucking awful name. Axel was, of course, Alex, and refused to have two Xs in a five-letter name, because that was ridiculous.

The cat headed for Axel's lap, which, while boniest, was also warmest.

"Don't call him Peanut Butter," Marluxia whined. "His name isn't Peanut Butter!" Marluxia was, unfortunately enough, also a trapeze artist. And probably really gay. Like, really really gay. At least, maybe not in terms of sexual preference, but in _every other way_ he was homosexual.

"But everyone calls him that," Axel retorted, scratching the cat behind the ears. "Don't they, Peanut Butter? Huh? Abooga-" and proceeded to make awful nonsense noises at it.

"You do know that his name is Pangur Ban," Zexion said coolly. Ienzo was actually a pretty cool name. It sounded like, Italian or something.

"Yeah," Xigbar said, "But that such a lame name it's like…ugh, just whatever." Braig just sounded butch, Axel got why Xigbar stuck with the change. Xigbar did the daredevil-y crap.

"Why? Because it has a historical connotation?"

"You're such a fucking prick."

"Xemnas named that cat for a reason," Lexaeus said, backing up his friend. "He likes that poem." Lexaeus was the dog trainer.

"It's not a very good poem," Luxord mumbled. "It barely even rhymes." Luxord was also a musician.

"I shudder to think where it is that you come from that poems have to rhyme," Zexion said, and Demyx laughed.

"Maybe he just liked the name," Axel said, "Maybe he didn't mean that Peanut Butter is like some eighth century monk's cat from a poem, or something, maybe…" he sighed. "Maybe he just liked the name, okay? _Je_sus, guys, drop it."

A bubbly silence rose up and propagated itself like a wet stain on a paper towel. Sometimes Axel did things like that, said things that ended conversations without really meaning to. He wasn't a big fan of totally pointless conversations like that – at least, not ones he didn't have a personal stake in.

Axel was pretty much aimless. He had no goals. He thought about that sometimes. He wasn't a loner, of course, but he didn't have much in the way of goals. He planned to work in the circus until he got too old, and maybe like, own a pet store or something. He didn't know. He sorta liked animals. He sorta liked a lot of things. He sorta liked circuses. Hm. There was a phrase or something like that, wasn't there? "Jack of all trades and master of none."

Axel sneezed. He had a very mild dust allergy. "Hey," he said, "D'you think we can leave? I kind of want to…um…do something."

"You want to walk around with your glasses and your creepy black coat like a creepy cult dude, dontcha?" Xigbar grinned.

"I want to take a _walk_, yeah. And I _am_ a creepy cult dude. You are too."

"How do you figure?" Zexion spoke again, adjusting the glasses on his nose.

"Um," Axel said, "_Organization XIII_ is pretty much the most cultish name for a _circus_, um, _ever_. We have _rank_ numbers for the first twelve people and a set of rules and practices. That qualifies as a cult for me."

Some asshole messing around with the light pillars swung one around and shined it directly in their eyes. Larxene yelled some obscenity and it was swung off in a few confused seconds.

"Yeah," Demyx said, "Maybe he just liked the name…it's a nice name…"

"You're real slow, huh Dem?" Xigbar cackled.

"No," Demyx said simply. Zexion smiled, very secretly under his glasses.

Axel suspected them of being secret best friends. He was kind of jealous.

XXX

Of _course_ he didn't get to just go off on his own and be that guy in coffee shops who drinks his coffee silently, reads a book and leaves without looking at anybody. He almost was, but at the last moment Xemnas caught him and handed him about twenty inconveniently large posters for the circus.

He was in a coffee shop, of course (and it was raining outside), but he had to ask the girl behind the counter if he could put up a poster. Then he had to wait for her to get some tape, and when he _got_ the tape discovered that it was very difficult to get the poster to stick to the wall. He sighed and pressed another corner on. It peeled off. He'd been trying to use bubbles of tape (where you loop it around and attach it to itself, sticky-side-out) because those weren't visible. Maybe just putting tape right on the corners would be better.

He stood on his tiptoes to try and affix the corner as best he could, pressing very hard and making a face. It was just past ten in the morning on a Saturday, so the only people there were teenagers coming in for breakfast or chatting obnoxiously on cell phones. Not a decent body in the place.

Damn, he'd _known_ he shouldn't have worn his high school football shirt. It was too short. Every time he stretched his arms up part of his stomach was visible. That was sexy on girls, yeah, but on a _guy_ it was kind of weird. Not sexy.

He sighed and blew air out of his lips so that they vibrated like rubber, making a sort of horse noise. He coughed.

"Hey," said a voice behind him.

Axel nearly jumped at hearing somebody address him, and for a moment was entirely sure that whoever it was couldn't have possibly meant him. He turned around.

Kid couldn't have been more than fifteen, sixteen at the most. He was short for his age, and his hair projected from his head in a little wave, like a little blond rooster. He was staring at Axel with baby blues the size of fucking cannonballs.

"What?" Axel asked gruffly.

"What are you doing?" the kid asked him, sticking one hand in his sweatshirt pocket.

"Working," Axel replied, and returned to doing so. The posters he'd been given were a little bit shady, for sure. It was a picture of Zexion, with his hair even messier than usual and covering one of his eyes, one gloved hand holding up a couple of cards which had those old sort of circus drawings like on their trailers. One card's picture was of Larxene, a contortionist, all packaged up neatly in a glass box, and the other had Axel hanging upside-down on a trapeze bar. All you could see was like most of Zexion's face and the hand with the cards; everything else was in shadows. It was a really, seriously dumb idea, and Axel was kind of embarrassed to be seen taping them up. But if you were into that sort of thing, it looked pretty cool. Zexion could look like an intensely mysterious fucker when he wanted.

"What are those posters for?" the kid asked him, taking a step closer.

Damn. He'd forgotten about that guy. He looked back at him again. Axel stepped back so the blondie could see the text underneath the picture about the circus and their performance times.

"A c- " the boy paused and moved his lips strangely, like he was trying to find words in his mouth. "Er, _cirque_?"

"Uh, sure," Axel said. He didn't know why this guy couldn't just call it a "circus" like normal people. Maybe it was a trend to use random French words when you could. Made you sound more…intellectual or something. Well, fuck that, he'd had a French roommate in college and that guy had been a dumbass.

The boy fell silent, but didn't leave. Didn't he have friends to get back to? Axel sighed and turned around again. He didn't really want to be seen speaking to a teenage pretty boy. Kid was jailbait waiting to happen, seriously. Axel wasn't gay or anything, and hell if he found a little boy attractive, but he'd heard the stories about pervy gym teachers.

He ripped another piece of tape off the roll and stuck a corner down. This was taking way too long.

"Do you…work at the circus?" the kid asked him quietly. Axel didn't reply. He was _almost_ done taping this poster up and then he could head to that snooty bookshop a couple of blocks down that he'd seen. Carrying the stupid fucking embarrassing posters the whole way. Greeeat. All he'd wanted to do was go on a walk, but _no-o_.

That sounded way too whiny and adolescent for his comfort. Axel shook his head.

"You don't?"

"What?"

"You don't work at the circus?" the boy asked. He sounded disappointed.

"Wh – no, I do, uh…" Why the _shit_ was this kid even talking to him? Seriously! Didn't his parents ever tell him not to talk to strangers?

"Oh!" he sounded very happy. "You do! That's…" he trailed off. "Good."

O-_kay_. Clearly this kid's first language could not have been English.

"What do you do in the circus?" he asked Axel. He was smiling.

"…trapeze artist."

The kid screwed his eyebrows together and mouthed the word to himself. "_Trapeze…trapeze…trapeze…"_

Axel raised his eyebrows and coughed. Now, he was never much of a one for awkward social encounters, and he usually felt obligated to speak up and make conversation, but if this kid wanted to talk so bad, let him. Axel wasn't about to jump in and help.

"That's…good," he said again, and smiled up at Axel. Cannonball-sized eyes. God.

Axel made a clearing-his-throat noise and nodded. "…thanks," he said awkwardly.

"I like the circuses," the boy offered, and stopped smiling. He seemed to be waiting for Axel to say something.

Axel kind of admired the bare-faced balls it took to go up to a perfect stranger at least seven or eight years older than you were and start talking to them. He knew he'd never have been willing to do that when he was a teenager. Hell, he wouldn't do that now.

"Cool," Axel said, "So do I."

The kid's eyebrows shot up, and he started mouthing that word, too. "_Cool, cool, cool…trapeze…cool, cool…trapeze…_" Yeah. Definitely not an Anglophone.

"Ehm," Axel guttered, "Well, I have to go put more of these up, so…"

"Oh!" the boy said, running a hand easily through his hair. Axel grinned at him and saluted the kid with his roll of posters and headed out the door. The kid grinned back.

On his way around the corner to the snooty bookshop, Axel started to smile to himself. He laughed. Maybe it was the upbeat (but still crap) song stuck in his head, or the lack of sleep, or maybe it really was that ballsy little kid in the coffee shop, but he was in one of those moods. Everything seemed funny, or beautiful. Even people. He laughed again.

(He still maintained, later, when he was older and swore less, that is was pure coincidence who he chose for the "volunteer from the audience" two nights later. Because of course, it wasn't like the kid made any sort of special _impression_ on him the first time.)

XXX

The time during the show was always hectic. Even if you were only on for one or two acts, the constant rush of people going everywhere and adjusting costumes jingling bells beckoning dogs barking people muttering things juggling props. Was dizzying.

Demyx walked by, an accordion slung around his shoulders, warming up with these odd little face-paced noises. The kind of sound an accordion might make if it were jogging. Just beyond the thick red curtains, in the blooming dust the color of old leather shoes, Larxene was being very bendy on top of a thin metal pole, standing on one hand or crouched in a little ball or something. Axel could hear the audience, the low rumble of discussion and utterances of "wow!" and "look at that!" and "whoa!" and "ooh!". It was a sort of soft rolling thunder, like a thousand people humming as quietly as they could. One of the musicians howled wildly on a clarinet or an oboe or something.

"Axel!" Marluxia hissed, standing right in front of him.

"What?"

"Look at me! The makeup's getting smudged," he muttered, taking a small brush dipped in face paint and waving it around. "It's gonna look weird."

"Oh," Axel said, turning back from the sliver of crowd he could see through the curtains. He allowed Marluxia to grip his chin with callused hands to hold his head still. Marluxia began to fill in one of the inverted triangle shapes he'd drawn on each of Axel's cheeks. Stage makeup, Mansex said, drew more attention to you. And something like weird triangles made you seem mysterious? Shit if Axel knew. He'd done it once and Xemnas had told him to keep doing it.

The paint felt odd and cool as it dried on his cheek, and the brush was tickling him. He thought about the times he'd gotten his face painted at a carnival, or a state fair. Those had been more fun, somehow, walking away with a sub-par dragon or tiger face. But, still, it felt nice.

"'Kay," Marluxia said, taking a step back. "Good enough. Larxy's done in a minute or two."

Axel didn't reply, and Marluxia shrugged and started to put his hair into a low ponytail.

Axel leaned back against the large bird cage which was used in one of the clown acts, and let his head hit the bar with a little metallic clang. The cage vibrated behind him briefly. The air smelled like dust and leather polish and sweat, and he closed his eyes. Demyx walked by again with his irregular little pattern of accordion playing.

There was wild cheering outside, past the big red curtains, _whoo-whoo-whoo_ and _yeaaaaah! _as Larxene got down from the pole and jogged back, but Axel didn't notice. His eyes were still closed.

_"And now, ladies and gentlemen,"_ came Xemnas's voice from the microphone, magnified and grand and low, _"From the highest clouds, sky monkeys themselves, Axel – and – Marluxia!"_

Marluxia grabbed his wrist and Axel jogged next to him –

Curtains peeled back –

He caught a glimpse of one of the clowns getting into a gorilla costume –

Dust –

Surrounded by people on all sides and climbing the ladder – up the ladder – chalk on your hands –

Bright lights and a whispered "good luck" from Marluxia – bright lights –

Jump.

* * *

A/N: I didn't know how to do that last bit. Sounds like a nonsense poem, doesn't it? Oh~ well.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I think we (KH fandom) lucked out in terms of pairing names. Even if you don't say AkuRoku, you can say like, Roxel, or something, right? Zemyx, Lexion, Marluxen. Poor Twilight fandom. Think about it. You're gonna have to go with either "Belward" or "Edwella." What the Hell is that?

(...I shall officially now create an OC and name her Edwella.)

For clarification: just because Roxas's thoughts are linear and in English doesn't mean he's strictly thinking in English, yeah?

* * *

"I was born," the Mouse said. "I must die. I am suffering. Help me. There, I just wrote your book for you."  
- **Samuel R. Delany**, _Nova_

_

* * *

_

Hello, journal.

It is homework from my English Language Learning Class to write in a journal everyday for two weeks. This is the first day. I know that I have to write in English, but I do not know what else to write. My English Language Learning Class is not going to read it, but I have to do it. I hate English. I think that it is a stupid language. It is too big. I hate how it sounds.

Hayner says that French is not a good language. He says that it is confusing. I think that English is confusing. To write the journal, I have to use a dictionary.

My English Language Learning Class says I write about who I am and how I look like. I am Roxas. I am blond. I am French. I have a brother.

My parents are dead.

Goodbye, journal.

* * *

God, _that's_ finally done. I hate writing in journals, in _English_, I mean - it's such a waste of time, you know? I don't know why I have to bother. It's not as if I don't get _plenty_ of practice in my daily life.

I mean seriously, _fuck_ England, we still beat your ass in the Hundred Years' War.

First day I came to school, somebody told me this joke:

"How many gears does a French tank have?" to which the answer is "One, and it's reverse."

Oh, ha-ha-ha. You're so funny. Yeah, I appreciate it, bring me into your group. It just alienates me, you know. Which I guess is why I hang out with Pence and Hayner and Olette all the time. They don't really care. I really appreciate that about them.

I'm not complaining, you know, or at least not out of reason. As horribly storybook as it sounds, if you'd been orphaned and sent into foster care with a family that up and moved as soon as they'd gotten you, you'd be kind of upset, right? Oh _jeez_, does that sound lame. I mean that sounds really lame.

But considering the situation, I guess I lucked out. I mean, I've got a pretty nice family. Sora basically had to cross an _ocean_.

And it's not like this feeling is new, or anything.

I was talking to Olette about it, yesterday, and she says in English it's called "wanderlust". I like that word. 'Cause I know what wander means, and I looked up what lust means. And it fits together just right. Wanderlust.

As it were: I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. Ha ha ha.

It is, I think, born in me. The wanderlusting. I thought everyone grew out of it by twelve, but here I am, fifteen and still looking for adventure, right? That's all I really want. An adventure. A real one, you know. And a real adventure can't have chaperones, and there can't be any planning. It's just got to _happen_.

I do not count being orphaned as an adventure. Because it _sucks_. It's not as romantic as you think it is, you know! It's not like I all of a sudden don't have parents to tell me what to do. I just don't have biological ones.

Yeah, I'm upset about it. You don't care. The pain gets numb after the thousandth time you think "they're never coming back" to yourself, anyways. I won't bore you with the details.

I want an adventure with no chaperones. I have been thinking about how to get my adventure, and my mind goes around and around in these circles, but I can only think of one _for-sure_ way.

See, I could just walk around and talk to people, right? And like, see if any of them are really interesting, or if they need random favors done, or something. 'Cause yeah, you're gonna ask a fifteen-year-old to go and search for the bag of 50 Gold you dropped on the way to Town Market past Dragon Cave, and in return, if he finds it for you, you will give him some nourishing Milk as a reward!

The other way is not playing videogames. Clearly, I've tried that.

The only way is getting lost. Really, hopelessly, horribly lost where you walk so far in one direction that you don't even know where you _might_ be anymore. Because if you're lost, you can't chicken out and go home. You can't tell yourself "it's okay, I don't have to" anymore. To get home, you _have_ to go on an adventure, even if it is just asking a stranger for directions. Maybe you're so far out that you have to get a job to pay for a bus ticket back, and you have to...sweep railroads or something. And you meet a hobo, and he tells you all about those crazy symbols that hobos use to mark houses and rocks and things - I guess.

I'm sure there are other ways for that to work, with other people. But not me. If I just walked around casually, I'd be sure to want to give up and go home. I would have to get very, very lost - maybe use up all the money I have and buy a train ticket and head north. Forty-three pounds' worth of _north_.

That has to get you lost.

I read a story where that happened, actually, a kid ran away from home. Only he ran really _far_ away from home. Of course, it was an American story (that had been translated into French) so what _actually _ended up happening was the kid was taken in by a clan of ghosts in a ghost village or something, but the point remains.

I tried telling Olette about it once. I told her, and we were talking through email, that the thing I wanted most in the world was a real adventure. I wanted to have a swordfight, or crawl across a rickety bridge over a pit of lava. So I said I wanted an adventure. And then she surprised me: her reply was something like "Oh, me too! I love having adventures! Do you want to go on an adventure together?"

I should've known she hadn't _meant_ it, obviously. What she meant by an "adventure" when she wrote that was "Do you want to go on the metro to this crazy antique sale." Seriously, she meant an antique sale. And it was like, all lamps. What the _hell_ kind of adventure is that, I ask you! Yeah, uh-huh, _that's_ a perfectly good Saturday I don't regret wasting, _jeez_ Olette.

It's not like I'm unsatisfied. I've got an okay lot in life. It's funny, you know how when you have a bad day you think to yourself "It's okay, it could be worse, there are carpet slaves in India!" Like, I _am_ that worst-case-scenario. "It's okay, I could be an orphan in a country whose language I'm not fluent in!" Seriously. But considering that, I'm okay. I think it's kind of depressing, though, how we make ourselves feel better by thinking about how other peoples' lives suck _more_.

I would say that me being in England is like the F1 generation cane toads in Australia. I was put here against my will, I don't really want to be here but I'm surviving, and I _kind _of get the vibe that all the natives want me dead. Ah, heh.

Ah, so anyways. It's Saturday. Saturday means that as soon as I finish up with my homework (and I don't have much, 'cause one of my periods is ELL and then I'm also in stupid-person English literature class, which has virtually no homework), I get to go outside and walk around as much as I want. Fridays, and sometimes Thursdays, too, I go to this old church that's kind of near the house I'm staying in right now. It's almost always totally empty, too. But they have like, Bible study or something on Saturdays, so I don't go.

I don't tell my foster parents. I don't think they'd care, anyways.

Before I leave, I decide to change my shirt. I've been wearing this Dream Demon tee that I stole from Sora for like three days. Pulling it off, I open up a drawer of a cabinet in the room I sleep in. Most of this stuff is not mine. The white shirt, there, and that junior high school track team jersey stuffed in the back, the black t shirt that's keeping the drawer from closing all the way; they're all mine. The rest of it is stuff my foster family bought for me. No, only the black and white jacket, Nam bought that for me, so it's mine. Remind me to tell you about her. There's a world of hurt right there.

I grab the black shirt, since it's closest, and pull off the one I'm wearing. It's either raining or just misty outside, one or the other; point being the whole room is kind of grey and muggy, and there's no real light, like when you shine a flashlight through a blanket.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror that's hung on the closet.

The thing that sucks about looking the way I do, and yeah, I've got blond hair and blue eyes, is that I'm pretty feminine. Not in the way that I act, or anything. But I look like a girl. People've made the mistake before, honest to God. "Roxas" is a pretty androgynous name, you know.

But even looking at my bare upper half, I can get why people make the mistake. I don't have boobs or anything, but I sure as hell don't have any muscles. And I don't have wide shoulders. I could just be a flat-chested girl with no curves.

I'm not fat or anything. I'm not real skinny, either, just sort of stretched out a little. But I don't have any muscles. Even this light, this total non-light which is vague and foggy and dulled, seems to catch on any sort of bump or ridge on skin barely shows a couple of abdominal lines, stretching down my stomach. I almost look like a little boy without so much baby fat.

I mean _Je_sus, I look fit to be raped. _Je_sus.

I pull on the shirt.

I put on my coat, which is literally one of those beige peacoats that you see guys wearing in those jewelry commercials where it's Christmas eve and snowing and they just bend down on one knee on the sidewalk and give the girl earrings, or something. My foster parents bought it for me. I hate it, though, I wish I had a windbreaker. This thing isn't even waterproof.

It's raining outside, like it always is. Even being in a cutesy suburban area like the one I'm in, all picket-fence-houses and lawns green and short, it's always raining. It rained yesterday. It'll probably rain tomorrow, too.

My grandpa had this saying about the weather. "Forecast for tomorrow? _Hrrmph!_, same as it was today." And the day before that, and the day before that...

And dammit if he wasn't usually right. Sometimes I think the saying applies to more than just weather.

So I head for downtown. And downtown is not so much downtown, in a suburb, as it is a few tiny shops surrounded by gigantic houses that only have three people living in them. There's a coffee shop.

A little jingly bell rings as soon as I open the shop's door, and a couple of people look up briefly before deciding that I am nothing worth a second glance, which I'm not. I know that sounds whiny. But I prefer it if people don't look at me. I mean, I'm about to go order something, which means I have to speak. _English_. I'll probably get plenty of attention. I hate speaking in English. People always look at you. I took German in junior high!

May as well get it over with. I head up to the counter, where a lovely pimply-faced Brit is standing, smiling at me. She's got braces.

"What can I get you?" she asks me, opening up the cash register.

"Ah, can I pleaze 'ave..." she looks up at me. You see what I mean? This is what is sounds like, when words come out of my mouth, in English. I sound like an _idiot_. "A, euh, smooll iced coffee and a biscuewy?" Wait, wait wait, dammit. I meant "biscuit" but it came out French. You don't pronounce the "t" in French. I wince.

"Sorry, that's a small iced coffee and...?" she asks me, smiling a fake smile with her eyebrows drawn together.

Now, I can say "biscuit", all right? I want to make that clear. I can say that word, it just came out wrong just now. I don't feel like talking any more. I just point to the display of chocolate chip cookies behind the glass and smile at her halfheartedly. She nods, "Ah, okay!", and grabs one with some tissue paper or something.

"That'll be...two pounds fifty," she grins at me and hands me the cookie in a bag and presses the cap of the coffee cup onto the cup itself, and hands that to me. When I pay her, she says "merci" and winks at me. My hand tightens on the paper bag and I smile bitterly back at her before heading for an armchair in the corner.

Listen. I'm no introvert. I'm a very friendly guy. But when you sound like _zeez_ when you speak you don't really want people to hear you. It's embarrassing. People always joke about "oh, I felt like I was wearing a sign, and that it was really obvious that," I dunno, "that I had masturbated that morning" or something. Bad example. My point is that that's a pretty dumb thing to say when I basically _am_ wearing a sign. People can tell that I'm different from them, because they hear it in my voice; it isn't paranoia. People look at you different because they don't expect you to talk like that.

I never stood out in Caen. Sure, I look weird, but I'll be the first to admit I've got a pretty boring personality. Unoriginal, at least. If you tried to pick me out of a line of boys you'd be wrong. I'd be the other one.

Which is why I prefer reading books over making small talk. Not that that brings me a whole lot more peace, really. I have had this conversation three times in the last week at _least_:

Somebody comes and sits down next to me while I'm reading a book and says "Watcha reading?"

And I say "A book," since I don't want to be bothered.

And they say "Oh, haha, I know _that_ silly, but what book?"

And I say "A book book." I usually say it pretty darkly and then glare at the person bothering me. If I'm reading a book, I want to read a book. It's a mentally taxing thing. I have to pay attention. Don't pull me out of book world!

And then they say "Yeah, but what's it called? Who wrote it?"

And since I don't want to give them the satisfaction of telling them, I hold it up from my lap so they can see the title and the author and I don't have to say anything. I know I'm a bratty teenager. But I don't want to have to talk more than I have to. It's bad enough saying "book". To you it looks like "book", but when I say it it comes out "bewk".

That sounds ridiculous, I know, but it's not like I do it on purpose. If I try really, really hard I can sort of make it go away, but I can barely think about the words I'm saying when I do that. Like...okay, a few days ago I was talking on the phone with Sora, and he was like "Oh hey, I'm going to put you on speakerphone, say hello to some guy you've never met and who probably didn't even know you existed until this point, _hahaha_." Fucking _hell_. So I actually put effort into making the freaking accent go away. I don't think whatever-his-face-was caught on.

My point being that I sit down in the armchair, right next to the window, and crack open some dime-store paperback. In French. I read books in English too, but I mean...just, I should get a break, right? You probably don't get it, nobody gets it. When I sit down and read a book in English, I have to keep this little electronic dictionary thing with me to look up words. And when I've looked up a word, I have to go back and put the sentence together so it makes sense again. And I have to do that about a thousand times and string all that together into a story and try to remember what's happening. It's so tiring, when you hate it so much.

I just wanted an adventure, and then I wanted to go back home. This doesn't count. Something like this doesn't ever count.

There are a lot of boring people here, you know. The girl behind the counter keeps rubbing at her eyes, so maybe she's got contact lenses in or something, and there are a couple of teenage girls in a corner opposite me. I hate girls my age. They're so...giggly.

Don't get me wrong, I don't exactly like the boys my age, either, but I mean...I mean never mind. I don't really mean...that.

There's a guy standing by one of the big yellow walls. He's definitely older than I am, in his twenties, or maybe even his very late teens. He's like a human noodle that somebody set on fire, I mean _Je_sus, nobody's hair is actually that color red, is it? That's way too bright! It might be black at the roots, but I can't tell, and that could be shadows from the _giant fucking spikes_.

Who has hair like that? Who the hell spends _time_ making their hair _look_ like that?

He's taping a poster to the wall, but I can't see what it's for. It's got a lot of black on it, but still. If he'd just move to the side a little...

He looks like an interesting person, I'll tell you that. With the hair and the creepy long black coat and...is that mime makeup under his eyes? Like, little triangles, or something? I think it might be. Swear to god.

I don't know what makes me do it. Maybe it's because the book I'm reading today kind of sucks, or because the teenage girls finally left, or just general Saturday morning depression (best time of the week in the worst place, see). But I close the book and stand up and walk over there to see what's on this poster he's putting up. I shrug off the peacoat and leave it hanging over my chair.

Oh, hang on, I must've put a sweatshirt on before I left. I wouldn't be surprised, this thing is like my fifth limb.

It's a poster for a circus that's supposed to start performing in a few days. It looks pretty exciting. I wonder if I'll be allowed to go? Do you think forty-three pounds is enough for a ticket to a circus?

The guy looks like he's having some trouble taping up the poster, but he looks friendly enough, so I decide to try my luck.

How will this conversation go, first. I should say "hey." H-sound. I can do that if I focus!

"Hey," I say, and the guy practically jumps a foot in the air and turns around to look at me. He gives me a kind of awkward once-over and blinks a few times. He narrows his eyes.

His eyes are the color of toxic waste. Maybe a little darker.

"What?" he asks me abruptly, which I think is pretty rude, even for an American (which I think he is). But I keep going just...because.

"What are you doing?"

He rolls his eyes. "Working," he says, and turns around again. I've never seen someone have so much difficulty taping a poster to the wall.

I think about my next sentence very carefully, _What are the posters for._ Whaht ahr the - _the, the, _th-sound, poast-erz four. Okay. Okay.

"What - are - the - posters - for?" My sentence is halting, because "what are you doing" is a pretty regular sentence but this one I don't say too often. I already know the answer to my question, but I can't think of anything else to ask.

He stares at me for a second and _goddamn_, but he's got skinny heroine-addict written all over him (too lanky). I glance at the poster.

Dammit, what's the English word for this? It's probably similar to cirque, but it might be something completely different, and if I guess wrong I might say something really, really bad.

"A c- " dammit. "Er, _cirque_?"

The guy turned back to the poster and stuck tape on another corner. "Uh, sure." Oops.

Oh, man! It says it right there on the poster! _Circus_! I shoulda _known_, I really shoulda _known_. He keeps ripping off tape and sticking corners down.

"Do you...work at the...circus?" Oh, um. I think - I think my voice kind of...I don't know, I might be imagining it, but there might have been an accent for a second. Did you - ? Never mind.

The man stares at me for a few more seconds, closes his eyes and shakes his head and sticks a corner back onto the wall that has come undone.

There's a keen disappointment when he does that. I thought at least I'd get to say I met a circus performer. "You don't?" I ask him.

"What?"

"You don't work at the circus," I repeat.

"Oh! Wh - no, I do, I, uh..." he looks a little flustered which I enjoy.

I pester him about his circus a little more until he looks incredibly awkward and claims to have things to do, people to see, you know, anywhere else. I don't even know why I'm so interested in him. Maybe just because I'm shallow, and he looks interesting.

XXX

I don't think I need to bother telling you what it's like, going to a circus. More than anything it smells like hay and lots of little people and popcorn and Cracker Jacks.

And horses. I mean, ew. Honestly.

This magician guy is kind of impressive. He's not wearing a top hat, for one thing, and that gets him points. A little melodramatic, but I guess they all are.

Oh, did you see that redhead's thing? Trapeze artist, you know. He told me that in the cafe, but it was still kind of cool to see it in real life. He did all this spinning shit with this other...person with pink hair. I mean, I _think_ it was a guy, but pink hair...? Didn't really pull it off, man.

His name is Axel. Not the pink-hair, the redhead. Axel. I don't know if that's a stage name or not, but I think he saw me, or...something. Whatever it was, he kept looking in this direction, way more than he looked in any other direction. I don't really know, I just think he's cool? He's an adult, but I don't think he grew up in England, which means he had to move from wherever he came from first. And I'd like to do that. I want to apply to a college overseas, maybe, or just like...hell. Maybe I'll get a job at a traveling circus.

Oh, hey. Hayner nudges me. The great and mysterious Zexion needs a helper from the audience. He cackles something about how with my hair, it's hard not to draw attention, and when I roll my eyes he just raises my arm for me.

"This guy! Pick this guy here!"

Zexion (no, no, I mean they're really calling him that...but I'm...not really one to talk) quirks an eyebrow and switches his gaze to the thick red curtains separating the performers from the backstage. A couple of faces peak through it, and yeah, there's a redhead in there. Pink-head guy too.

Axel mouths something and twitches his head in this direction vaguely. Zexion shrugs.

His eyes swing forward; I can't tell what color they are. Just dark, that's all that I can see.

"Dude, he's looking at you," Pence elbows me in the gut. "Go _down_ there!"

"...'e izn't looking at me, Pence," I say. What I like about Pence is that he doesn't look at you funny if you can't pronounce your H's.

Zexion (oh god, let that be a stage name) crooks a finger at or near me, so I act on instinct and look around. There's a family of a husband, wife and their very small baby, so I don't think he meant one of them. I look at him again and point to my chest, "Moi?"

He nods.

* * *

I think maybe it was my fault, what happened. Guy says "don't close the hatch all the way" you probably should leave it a good few centimeters open, right? Don't close it in a way that's barely more mild than slamming. Or maybe he did do something wrong.

I don't really care. They're scared of me suing them because I got stuck in the disappearing hatch, so guess what? I get a tour of the behind-the-scenes circus! I hope to hell it isn't from that ringmaster guy. For one, that man has seen the inside of a tanning salon clearly more than is healthy, especially for a guy with white hair, and for two, I think he was wearing a coat with _zebra stripes_. Or...something _like_ zebra stripes. I swear to god.

Waiting outside the performer's tent, and it's a disgustingly clear night for a Sunday in England where it rains all the time. It's a big wet rock and the food is terrible. I can't stand it. I can't stand this place.

But the circus was like magic. You understand? It wasn't one of those kiddy circuses. The whole thing was like an eerie hallucination. The music was fucked up, but the good kind of fucked up, and it was pretty amazing. Hard to remember that I'm in England.

There's a streetlight, just one, over the little parking lot. A lot of people have had to park on the grass in the field, but anyways.

Y'know how if you're in a forest at night, you don't realize how many bugs there are until you turn on a flashlight and there's like, a _column_ of them in the beam? Not mosquitoes or anything, but I mean these tiny little flies like dust with propellers on.

The one lonely streetlight makes a little moving orange column of bug, like a cloud. And I'm kind of hoping that the light is attracting the bugs, because if they're that thick _everywhere_ then I've probably inhaled a few.

"Ax_el_! D'you have to be such a weirdo? It's poker, not - not like _drugs_ or something."

"I don't play poker with Luxord. He always wins. 'Sides, Zexion is cashing in that favor he got when he covered for me last Christmas, so I'm busy."

"Yeah? No way?"

"Mm. Gotta give a tour. So that'll take me like, maybe an hour? Anyways, Dem, you suck at poker. Do yourself a favor and just like, partner up with Xaldin or something. He's scary enough that nobody messes with him."

"Xaldin is a really nice guy, y'know. He's just - "

"Tell me later, dude. Whatever."

You-know-who pushes through the curtains. Arm over my shoulder, heavy and sweaty and brittle, somehow.

"Hey, I know you, don't I!" It isn't a question, and I can hear it in his voice when I stare at toxic green eyes and upside-down triangles like the pupils of a dragon.

"Mm," I say, because as far as he knows, I can speak good English.

I leave behind the orange cloud of insects when he drags me inside, into an awkward smelly place filled with people who don't look like people and the kinds of stares that stick to you like taffy and peel off your skin like band-aids, slow and painful and sticking to the back of my neck like they stick to the hairs on your arm.

This Axel guy is tall and he smiles a lot and he talks a lot but he doesn't ask many questions. So I stay under his arm.

* * *

A/N: Teehee. I IZ IN UR FAN FICTION, NOT ADVANCING UR PLOTLINES. God I'm so lonely and bored right now. Anyways. Chapter has point. Can you see it? Is pointy. Ffff. Uh...yeeeaaah.

...this is why they usually make me go back inside the cage at midnight. Sigh.

I really really appreciate reviews. Really really. But they aren't necessary, or anything, and I get not wanting to review, so it's cool, man. We're tight. For real. Um. Totes awesome. Um. Fistbump.

Hello lurkers. I love lurkers. I'm a lurker. Say hi lurkers, I only bite small tasty children, so you need not be afraid.


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